


Reflections

by missema



Series: Forever In Love [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Fluff, Growing Old Together, Love, Post-Blight, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 03:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17459399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missema/pseuds/missema
Summary: Alistair and Cordelia Cousland, later in life as the King and Queen of Ferelden.Two happily married people who are far too tired and still have too much to do even after saving the whole entire world.





	Reflections

Cordelia looked over at her pouting, naked husband and knew what he was thinking, that he had no right to grow old with her. Yet, they had, and as it goes she was quite glad for that fact, because the years between didn’t seem like enough time, even now.

Morrigan had ensured that there was no Calling for either of them, and that both of them could be parents. Alistair had even met Kieran once, though Kieran hadn’t known Alistair was biologically his father. Perhaps that’s what made him so enthusiastically parent their own children -- Alistair was a very hands-on parent -- family came first. 

Their kids were older now, not grown, but older. They were fourteen, thirteen and five. She had been forty-three with the last one, baby Keagan. Nature was funny like that, giving her two at once and then one very happy surprise. They were all boys, all Theirin boys, which made her heart flutter with pride as she thought of the legion of crushes they would inspire, the futures they could have, the love they’d give. Her brother Fergus, once coaxed back into the marriage mart by both desire and duty, had married a lovely woman with whom he had many children. Eight, to be exact, a number that always staggered Cordelia when she thought on it. Very few Couslands had produced so prolifically before, but she understood his desire to fill his castle with family again. She’d felt the same compulsion, the need to erase the bad memories with good ones provided by the sheer volume of people around her that she loved.

Alistair was sitting in bed, lingering there when he’d gotten out of the bath and had never really gotten any further. They were supposed to be getting ready for a dinner. It wasn’t the most terribly important of events, it wasn’t a state dinner but they were hosting some of the banns while they were in Denerim, and though they’d just seen them at lunch, they were forced to have dinner with them as well.

“Is there any chance that they’ve gone and made other plans?” Alistair asked, voicing thoughts that ran along the same lines as her own.

“You mean have they fucked off and left us alone for the evening? Not a chance, unless they want to risk offending us.”

“I won’t be offended,” Alistair said with a half-laugh. He sounded tired, and confirmed it in his next breath. “I’d be bloody thankful for the chance to get to bed early.”

Cordelia gave a shrug that was almost elegant as she turned to take a good look at him. Alistair wasn’t dressed, he’d stripped out of his day clothes and put nothing on in their place besides robe that she’d bought him in Orlais. He was wrapped in the rich garnet colored fabric, the color of the mabari in their heraldry, sitting sullenly on his side of the bed. She was similarly unmotivated; Cordelia had yet to bathe for dinner and the bathwater grew tepid in her indecision.

“Do you remember when you used to let me wash your hair?” he asked, his voice lower now. “It used to be so long it flowed around you like seaweeds in the bathwater.”

Her hair was still long, but since it had started to take on more white than a few errant strands, she’d cut it. The look of long white hair made her feel like a witch, although Morrigan might object to the depiction. Cordelia went to stand in the doorway of their bedroom, and Alistair watched her, eyes alight as he waited for her to respond. Alistair was an ideal partner for a bath, she could never forget that.

Instead she looked out the window, eyes gazing out towards the newly dark sky and rising moon, but not really seeing a thing. She remembered Alistair’s hands were they were still calloused from his sword, when he was young and his face had no lines. The things he said back then, when they fumbled together in a rotting tent on a bed of moss and he’d told her that he would love her forever, so sweetly earnest as he declared her both beautiful and magnificent. 

They’d lived a hundred thousand lives since then, since the Blight and all that came with it. She’d been a hero, an arlessa, a queen, a commander, a mother, and a wife since then and all of it with him. Alistair still said those same words, with even more promises behind them these days. “My love” he called her in public, where everyone and the Maker could hear, and better things in such a low voice that she barely knew what he said when he whispered her name like a benediction. In all these years, he’d never stopped grinning at her like he had when they’d come out of her tent together for the first time.

“You should call for more hot water,” she said, finally meeting his gaze again, “and send our regrets for dinner.”

#

Cordelia snored in her sleep, she always had. Well, she did a lot worse things on bean night, but he was gentleman enough to take the blame for that. Maker, that woman loved her black turtle beans. Those delicious little bombs were imported from Antiva, but grew well enough in Denerim with their milder maritime climate, and the queen loved them, so they appeared on the menu with alarming regularity. Alistair also liked them, but they agreed with him a bit more than they did with his wife. Either that or she was eating a great deal more than he was.

Ah well, as long as she was happy he could endure it.

Besides, last night hadn’t featured beans on the menu (thank the Maker) and though she was issuing tiny, snuffling snores, Cordelia was beautiful when she slept. Alistair rarely got the chance to admire her because it was her habit to rise before him and she generally fell asleep after him, even when they went to bed at the same time. But Cordelia with her ladylike snores and the blanket wrapped around her in a cocoon, was still a beautiful sight.

It was cold out, he could feel it in the stone walls, leaching the warmth that fire was valiantly trying to fill the chamber with. A maid had been and gone already, his fresh clothes laid out, the fire lit and clean water in the ewer near his basin. He hadn’t even heard her, though when he first became king, he hadn’t been able to sleep through it. He’d wait, tensed and ready to fight every time someone stepped into his room without knocking first. Cordelia still slept with a knife, but that was just prudent.

When it was time to wake, someone would knock on the door and then come lay their breakfast. They’d learned to wait before coming in, at least so they could draw the curtains around the bed closed. He was fairly certain a maid had come in when they were conceiving their eldest, and since then they’d had firm rules. Cordelia probably wouldn’t have minded a little audience, but he liked to keep the sight of his bare ass as private as he could, especially since he now had doors with locks and not a tent flap.

Cordelia liked his bare ass, even these days, and he liked that she was pretty much the only one that saw it.

He was no longer nineteen and all muscle, and bore only a passing resemblance to the young man in his coronation painting. It didn’t matter. He preferred the family portrait that had been done last year, him and Cordelia and their three boys all together. That one still resembled him, for the moment. One day he’d be an older man, no longer the middle aged father in the painting, but those days would be a blessing that he didn’t really deserve. He looked over at Cordelia, who’d rolled away from him during his introspection. She was close to the edge of her side, still wrapped in the blanket. She wasn’t asleep. She’d stopped snoring.

“I know you’re awake, love. It’s snowing,” Alistair informed her, because a quick glance out the window had shown him it was. They got snow in Denerim, but it was generally confined to the first and last months of the year, though there were times when a lingering winter touched their warm shores. Generally the weather here was much less severe than in the interior of Ferelden, unless a storm came from the water. The less said about those, the better.

“Is breakfast here yet?” she asked, her voice muffled by the blanket.

“No. Shall I ring for it?”

“Yes. I’ve got to go,” she said, sitting up. She grunted unhappily when her feet touched the cold floor. She was back in minutes, smelling like tooth powder and cold water. He should get the day started himself. He went to ring for breakfast.

But after Alistair took his turn relieving himself and brushing his teeth, he too returned to bed, closing the curtains around them. Cordelia curled up next to him, sharing her blanket with him. He felt her rest her chin on his shoulder as an arm pulled him to her chest. “Do we have a reason to get up today?” she asked into his back.

“Well, we should get ready for our trip to Nevarra,” he said, tired already at the thought of the long journey. It was their turn. The new king had come twice to Ferelden, though they had gone twice during the reign of King Markus. He just hated Nevarra with all of its creepy temples and weird obsession with gold and necromancy. Alistair heard the door open in the outer room, smelled the wafting scent of pastry and bacon as it was set out for the two of them.

“That’s not really enough of a reason to get up today,” Cordelia said, yawning into his back. “That place defies all plans. We were taken to worship a body last time we were there. I had to confess like thirty times to the Chantry brother here when we got back, because it just felt wrong,” she said and gave a shiver at the end of it. “I hated it.”

He had too, but he said nothing. His memories drifted towards more pleasant times during that trip, thinking of how Cordelia had debated scholars and held her own during one of their long nights. Nevarrans liked to debate, to argue points and politics, and thought they were the finest in the world at it. Cordelia, with her fine education in so many subjects the Chantry hadn’t bothered to equip him with, was easily the equal or better to many of the scholars there. She had been beautiful as she spoke, fiery when she argued with them, filled with a vigor that had been slowly sapped from both of them since the Blight. All of it had made him miss Wynne and the dwarf Dagna who knew magical history better than any human outside of Tevinter.

He tried to keep up with her over the years, but Cordelia read faster than he did, and in Orlesian too, which he’d never mastered. It wound up that she told him about most of the important books and treatises, summarizing them for him. She always accompanied him to Nevarra, where her sharp mind would be put to good use, but she never enjoyed it. The worst part of it was being away from their boys while they were gone. They couldn’t all go at once, and Teagan would come to Denerim to help their oldest rule while they were away.

The children would wake eventually, but no time soon. Teenage boys were not known to be early risers, and their youngest still slept in the nursery. He would wake first, but his nan would be there with him, and eventually Cordelia would get up to see their boys, though years ago she would have most certainly stayed in bed all day, doing her work from there and taking her meals in their suite. They’d spent many happy days locked together in their rooms, stealing hours together while they could before one or both of them had to rush off to some part of the country that needed them.

But Cordelia stirred in bed and sat up, the smell of food finally rousing her. He put an arm out and eased her back down. For a minute they were caught up in each other, him grinning from above her as she smiled up at him, settled back onto the pillows that he’d pushed her into.

“We don’t have to do anything today but watch it snow. I’ll get the breakfast tray and bring it in here.”

Her smile was renewed, wider and peaceful, her eyes closed after he said it. Alistair dropped a kiss on her soft mouth and got up to bring his queen breakfast.


End file.
